The sun brushed against the back of her neck as she walked towards the corral. Her hands fidgeted with the rope, looping it and unlooping it, her fingers running along the rough hemp braids, pausing at the bands of electrical tape marking hand holds.
Gus held his hand out to help her up onto the fence as she reached the edge of the corral, a smile splitting his tanned face. "You ready?" he asked, his voice a hoarse rasp.
She nodded as she reached the top of the fence. Inside the corral, her horse stood saddled, its side pressing against...
Leaving was the easiest decision to make, and the hardest action to take.
Clearly, it was better not to have to work for such a person. But on the other hand, if he left, he'd be leaving his co-workers to face her incompetence and maltemper himself.
What was he supposed to do? He had "Assistant Manager" on his resume now, it'd be easy for him to find other work. But over the past 6 months, he'd become good friends with a lot of his employees, who were all fun, smart people.
But, but he looked for another job. And he...
Lost, without a hand to hold. I imagine that's how some men feel in my position. As though everything they once had, all those they once knew, has gone forever. Because they were abandoned, or because they pushed it all away, who can say.
Yet it's weird, I've felt that way for so long, for so many years, I assumed that that would be how I felt at this moment. But somehow, staring at the noose before me, I've never felt more alive, and less alone.
I am guilty. I am innocent. I am a contradiction. And it doesn't matter....
He heard two doors smash and with a loud screech and a blinding beam of light, the door to the back opened. He expected the three masked men to open, but found a woman instead. "Is your name Martin?" "Who are you?", he asked. "I'm no one, until you tell me your name." His eyes almost fully adapted to the brightness and he could now see her clearly. She was wearing all black, except for a jeans jacket. She seemed to shiver in the cold, and he couldn't help but notice, that she's kind of cute.
Drowning in the sea. That was the trick of it. To be seen to swoon, to fall to the bottom. The pretend to expire. It was the pearls that weighed me down. They alway do. Spiros bought them for the moon. That is what he said. The moon. As if the moon had a price. All things had a price. He gave them to me in the back garden of the hotel under a moon that was more red that white. A bad luck moon. But the band played on in the gallery and couples in their best passed under...
She didn't look at him. She couldn't. "Look at me!" he shouted. She didn't. She couldn't.
She did.
Then she did again.
This went on for several hours.
"Stop looking at me!" he shouted. But she didn't not look at him. She couldn't not.
Then she didn't.
He was always looking at her. It was a condition called Iseezyaz, which causes the poor soul to stare at the person closest to them for all of infinite eternity. "It is perhaps the most unsettling, and boring disease known to mankind," Dr. Jesus Katmandu, discoverer of the disease had said upon the...
Running had always been an expression of freedom. That's how she had always seen it. The wind whipping through her hair, tugging at her clothes as her feet moved so fast that she felt like she was flying. AS though for just that moment, she was soaring above the ground, close enough to the clouds to touch them.
But then she began to notice the strings. The tiny threads, invisible against the light, that were attached to her clothes, hooked into her skin, threaded through to her soul.
When had that happen? When had she become the marionette? The freedom...
Boxes upon boxes upon boxes upon boxes.
Buried beneath more boxes and found deep below
even more boxes. We've built our lives around such
boxes. Filling them with such weighty things, keeping
them around because we're afraid to toss them and
who knows if we'll need their contents again
sometime in the future? We've built castles with these
boxes, making them larger and stronger fortresses
each day, stacking them on top of each other, careful
to not knock anyone else over. I, on the other hand,
don't like to keep boxes. They're too square and uncomfortable.
They remind me of...
She'd always come running when I called. I could have called her to come get a splinter out of my hand, to help me with my homework, to get me out from the tree in my backyard, or just so I could see her smiling face for hours as we talked. I was so use to this that the idea that some day she wouldn't come running when I called never even crossed my mind. I loved her with every single particle that made up my body.
At this exact moment though the only thought I could think was that...
Giving in wasn't an option, but there was little else she could do.
"Ok, ok," she told the young galant with the sharp blade, "take whatever you want. Just don't hurt me."
The rascal had a look in his eye so sharp it could cut glass. "What I want, my lady," he said, drawing the space out between words to give them import, "is you."
The young woman's eyes widened, her ruby lips opened, but words failed her.
Reaching down, he made himself ready for his reward; then laid his hands upon-
her chastity belt.
Freed of the constraints of...